Fame and Fortune

It is horribly vain to admit you want to be famous. And yet there are days when I want more than anything else to shout from the rooftops.

Which, of course, leads to a different kind of fame: "Local Man Shouts From Rooftops, Taken Away in White Van."

But that's just negative thinking. Putting up barriers where there ought be none.

Fame is for obsessives. Fortune, likewise, is for those willing to sacrifice to get it. And who's got the time to make those kinds of choices, really?

One of the reasons the Web has taken off is the promise of easy money. You can reach so much, generate "network effects" so quickly, that you can get fame and fortune without the hassle of hard work. You put up a blog or a MySpace page, and you think...wish...hope...that the whole world will beat a path to your virtual doorstep.

That's the underlying weakness in the foundation of Web 2.0 and participatory communication. Most people don't have the stomach to be creators. They're not obsessed -- they're dilettantes, fascinated by the sparkling promise of easy Internet fame, convinced that if they put the silly video they made with their friends up on YouTube that the whole world will find it just as funny as they did when it was screened for 15 of their drunkest friends.

People fret that LonelyGirl15 turned out to be a fake. Of course she was. It takes work to be entertaining. It takes work simply to be found on the Internet. Real "lonely girls" don't become Internet stars because they aren't that interesting, or aren't willing or able or talented enough to be interesting. Or, if they are, aren't willing to engage in the very specialized type of self-promotion that spurs "the Internet" to choose your "performance" over all the other lonely voices on the Web, speaking to no one but a few classmates and unfeeling search agents.

I find LonelyGirl15's "outing" as an actress fed lines by a wannabe director and screenwriter to be comforting. There's no free lunch. An unknown can create something new and compelling that gets everyone talking. If they're savvy and obsessive and vain and willing to sacrifice for fame and fortune.

There's hope for us all.